I noticed Dennis added some AdSense to his blog last week. An unremarkable event except to my own peculiar sensibilities. My personal experience with trying to make money with ads is nil, but I know enough that, at best, you're lucky if those ads earn you a few pennies. The clutter just isn't worth it in my book unless you're getting thousands or tens of thousands of visits every day. I'm guessing, but I don't think even the most popular 1-18-08 blogs (of which Cloverfield Clues is one) are "averaging" that kind of traffic. I'll also mention--without naming names--that much of the advertising on the various 1-18-08 blogs is downright obtrusive in its placement, frequency and unsightliness. But hey, to each his own.

That said, I'm mentioning it now because Dennis has, as usual, outdone the competition. Specifically, have a look at this post. Yes, there is the AdSense in the sidebar, but can you find the rest of the advertising?

What can I say. I never thought I'd approve of advertising on a blog, but I have to hand it to Dennis. He's shown, once again, the rest of us how it's done.

A friend if mine who was [relation to the film deleted by editor] told me there's thousands upon thousands of "parasites" on the big monster that leap off and attack everything in sight after it's been hit by some tank shells.

Supposedly they are sort of "Alien" looking with five or six claw like legs.

SixDraw

PS - the movie is (sort of) a modern day version of "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms ". Which if you ever seen it was about a giant monster attacking NYC.

As you're likely aware, AICN has an email and recollection of an email which further corroborates the "raptor-like" rumor that got lots of play last week. After reading AICN's report it sort of dawned on me that I know what the monster/movie is about. I'm not talking about an epiphany or anything. Rather, AICN's story simply tipped the scales to the point that my skepticism of all the "raptor-like" rumors was lifted. So here you go. What I know, and in order. Start here. Then go here. Now AICN:

First of all, I need to clearly specify that the first two bits below come from untested sources & should be treated as rumor.

I don't believe these points have appeared elsewhere on the net yet; if they have, please drop appropriate crediting into the Talkback below.

Despite such uncertainty, it's been a while since we've engaged in COLVERFIELD/1-18-08/MONSTROUS/JJZILLA tomfollery...so what the hell?

First up? A message from DJ, who claims to shed more light on details touched upon in the film's TEASER:

I have for you a description of a unseen new sequence from the film you all know as Cloverfield.

You know, the one with the monster?

I can now safely say the teaser is not separate from the film, its part of the beginning which was shown in an abridged fashion for the purpose of the teaser, it's longer in the movie.

The new scene opens with several traumatized survivors, moving through a very dark corridor there's slight cold blue illumination from halogen emergency lighting, a girl in the group is badly beaten up she's bleeding and looks very sickly. The main group is comprised of 3 characters, Rob from the main trailer, the cameraman and a girl, though there may be others.

This scene takes place after the initial attack of "The monster" the scene we all saw in theatres. Rob is taking charge and telling everyone to keep calm, the girl says she doesn't feel so good.

They limp along until US Army soldiers storm in shouting at them, demanding they drop they're weapons, they shout back they're unarmed, there's a lot of commotion, then they're herded briskly up some E.T style scientific tubing into a makeshift aid center, its very dark, threes lots of doctors tending to wounded and military walking about making the scene very busy. "What is that thing?" they ask as they catch their breath, the cryptic answer comes from a soldier "We don't know, but it's winning"

The imagery in this scene is like something after a terrorist bombing. A carcass is wheeled past with his guts hanging out, the cameraman struggles to take in the surroundings.

Rob gets angry with the aggressiveness of the soldiers who now tell them they can't leave, "I'm going out there, if you want to stop me you'll have to shoot me" we gather he's looking for his girlfriend. "I feel really sick" the girl unexpectedly mutters, the camera pans to her, shes looks like shes about to throw up, and curiously is crying blood from her right eye. Someone shouts "She's been bitten!"

Chaos ensues... Scene end. That's all you get, this may be used for promotion and is a possibility for an upcoming trailer.

DJ

Okay. "She's been bitten" is interesting here because...a few weeks back...we received a seperate e-mail. Unfortunately, I deleted the damn thing in a fit of overzealous inbox cleansing, but can convey the gist of the message. If whoever sent this message is reading, PLEASE RESEND the original message and I'll drop it into this article.

In short, the message I'm talking about said that the big monster that comes into New York is scaly. The message claimed that when a scale is dislodged from the monster (if it gets blown off by shelling, for example) the scales actually turn into smaller, raptor-like creatures that run around wrecking havoc. That could be very cool if true. It was also suck completely if real.

So the raptorthings might dovetail nicely with the line about the girl being bitten?

A desperate connection?

A legitimate sense of the film starting to form?

BOTH e-mails seem to corroborate one element we've been hearing quite consistently for some time now: that CLOVERFIELD is very much a "survivors on the run" movie that comes out of the gate pretty fast, and isn't predictable in terms of which characters make it and which characters don't.

If you follow the Untitled JJ Abrams Project working titles (key words) "Cloverfield" and "1-18-08" long enough, you get to know the online landscape. If you're just now reading about it, well, there are a few things you should probably know about the various purveyors of Cloverfield buzz. Here is my guided tour.

There are 4 categories of online news and speculation:

1. In Season. Or more commonly known as the msm (main stream media). The advantages of the msm are: 1) they have the largest and broadest market share and so are the likeliest to be blessed with exclusives; and 2) they cover broad topics and so don't have to resort to making up news in order to have something to report on. Cases in point are The Hollywood Reporter and Entertainment Weekly.

2. Non-Perishables. Now some of the sites I'll list in this category could possibly qualify as msm (similar advantages), but, among other factors, I don't list them as msm because I don't think they'd describe themselves as part of the msm. The important factors that they do have in common with the msm are their longevity (they were here before the 1-18-08 trailer premiered and they won't skip a beat come January 18, 2008), a respectable size readership and a focus that isn't limited to the Cloverfield phenomenon. These sites include:

Note: Having monitored the "non-perishable" sites closely over the past 2 months, I've come to expect both the best and worse kind of reporting from them. Or to put it another way, while they clearly benefit from greater resources than some of the below and have the key advantage of a large readership, their editorial standards are flexible if you know what I'm saying.

3. Perishables. These are sites devoted exclusively to reporting on, discussing and chronicling 1-18-08. Some are free blogs, others are paid domains. Some are commercial and a dwindling number are not. These sites came into existence on the wave of interest generated by the trailer and their future reason for being is somewhat up in the air come January 18, 2008. They do have one advantage over the In Season and Non-Perishable sites though. They are run be people who know the topic inside and out, who are versed in the latest, who basically read everything they can find on the movie on a daily basis. They are, in short, the experts. The following have proven staying power:

4. Spoiled. I'm calling these sites Spoiled in keeping with the whole grocery list theme, but I could also describe them as purveyors of bullshit, hives of crackpottery, morons, scam artists, crack whores, etc., or just plain liars. They suck so bad I'm going to list them without links. Be warned, these people will supply you with headline after headline of concrete, confirmed, (!)breaking(!) news, and they'll get a lot of attention as a result. But what you'll really be getting from these sites is the rankest bs of the day served up with all the certitude and sensationalism they can muster. These sites exist for one purpose and one purpose only. To do and say whatever it takes to get as much traffic as possible.

I see a few more 1-18-08 blogs have picked up on http://jjabrams.net/'s little contest. Outline the story and draw a picture and you could win cloverfield swag. While it seems like a good enough idea, and kudos to jjabrams.net for shelling out some dough, I can't help but notice how sleepy their little message board is. Really, not even 1,000 posts on that site yet, so the contest is a gimmick (of course it is) to try and jumpstart their little project. So I'm thinking, Wasn't there another well established JJ Abram's fan site? So I check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._J._Abrams, because that's where I remember finding it. Scroll down to the "External links" and what do I find? Seems the folks at http://jjabrams.net/ have been busy little beavers. They've listed themselves as none other than "The Official JJ Abrams Website". Wonder how long it will take the wikifolks to fix that little liberty...

Sadly, after about 10 minutes of looking around, it would appear that the most active cloverfield forum is none other than http://www.1-18-08news.com/forum/. Translation: the liars and the crackpots appear to be corning the "forum" market. I'm sure there's a good reason for that, but it's still disappointing.

One look at the trends and you'd think there hasn't been a notable "event" since JJ Abrams appearance at Comic-Con and prior to that, the 1-18-08 trailer making its debut in front of Transformers. But that laymen's view of the trend would be incorrect. The fact is a lot has happened over the last month. Slusho.jp has been updated at least twice and so has 1-18-08.com. There have been countless spy reports from various shooting locations as well as a leaked call sheet and dueling sources emailing plot and monster details to their favorite sites. The list goes on. So why is the trend, if anything, going down? I think it has to do with the lack of progress, as opposed to stuff, and it also suggests to me that there are limits to the internet's reach. Put the same "1-18-08" trailer in front of a newly released movie today and the trend will spike up again. Not everyone saw Transformers, and not everyone runs in the virtual circles where the Cloverfield buzz has taken hold.

Makes me wonder aloud whether it's even reasonable to expect Abrams and Co. to make it possible for the web based community to solve the mystery. Why would they when they could make a bigger splash (in front of a larger and more diverse audience) by solving the next piece of the puzzle themselves in the next trailer?

I've created a 1.18.08 Group on Flickr. The idea is to upload all the 1-18-08 images from around the web so they can be found in one place, and so they can be displayed in a slide show, which is kinda cool.

I'm a bit of a Flickr novice--so there may be some bugs still to work out--but I've opted to try the "group" approach on the off chance there are others interest in creating a 1-18-08 image pool.

Update: The "group" thing didn't seem to be working, so I've changed it to a slide show of my Flickr account for the time being.

Finally went and figured out LiveJournal rss and added the folks at 1-18-08.livejournal to the blog feed. You'll notice it's hosed. That happens when I add a new blog to the aggregator. I suppose I could run mirror aggregations and just switch them out after the flood of new content from new additions had time to integrate with the sparse new content from already assimilated blogs, but I'm too lazy and you don't have any idea what I'm talking about. That's okay since "site news" is lame anyway. But I think I may have figured out what I screwed up on this particular blog that's preventing Google from indexing it. This is a problem, and it's a problem I've been aware of for some time. The fact that I'm just now attending to it suggests I shouldn't be blogging. Or maybe it means I should. Anyway, this post really isn't about me wanting to share site news with you, it's about me wanting to test my fix. Specifically, light up my feed with a new post and see if it gets Google's attention. Please work. Please work. I don't want to have to futz with this any more.

Otherwise, I'm hoping LiveJournal's rss starts showing something relevant (read: recent) since I like those guys and would hate to have to cut them out just for choosing to post on a lame site. Speaking of lame, how disappointing is the WordPress community? And to think I thought those guys had it going on. Content people. Content.

Other than that, not much to report. I've so far managed to ignore the 1-18-08/Cloverfield themed blog latecomers, and it doesn’t look like I've missed anything. However, if that's you (you have a cloverfield blog, but it's not on the blogroll over their to the right), and you're in it for the long haul, email or comment with your url and I'll check it/you out.

Not sure what to make of 1-18-08 going off script other than maybe the script wasn't that good?

Perhaps the campaign has gone south for want of a plan worthy of the buzz. I can only hope the movie is as good as the trailer, since technically the trailer remains the only cool thing about Cloverfield.

i.e. the King in a world where even well established sites like DeadCentral, /film and now DarkHorizons appear to be the blind leading the blind with their highly reliable sources feeding them confirmed but conflicting(?) reports. To recap in brief:

You see that giant monster that emerges from the ocean to begin laying waste to New York City ... it didn't come alone.

According to "Mr. Slusho", much of the movie will revolve around the characters fleeing for their lives, not from the big one stomping the city, but from the "raptor-like" smaller versions hunting them down.

Last week DreadCentral reported a rumor from an e-mail spy that claimed to know the identity of the Cloverfield / 1-18-08 / Overnight monster(s).

[…]

We didn’t publish the report because our sources told us not to run with it. We have now verified with a second source that the report is completely untrue. We love DreadCentral. They have had some good scoops in the past, but this appears to not be one of them. Both of my trusted sources have assured me that raptor like creatures are meant to be in dinosaur movies, and not 1-18-08. So fear not, Cloverfield will not be a repeat of the often mocked American Godzilla film.

Reports yesterday of there being small raptor-like monsters appearing in the big J.J. Abrams-produced monster movie opening in January are correct it seems. Two agency sources today have sent along the following confirmed MAJOR SPOILER tidbits from the highly anticipated release:

- All the monsters are carnivores and eat people throughout.

- The smaller monsters grow from scales shed by the big monster.

- There is no back story as such like for "Godzilla" or "The Host", the big one simply emerges and the present script draft has it ultimately vanishing back into the sea.

- Also don't expect much in the way of survivors at the end, literally anyone can be killed at any time, including the leads.

Edit: Apparently, the one thing not in short supply where 1-18-08/Cloverfield is concerned is restraint.

Try this again...

Apparently "restraint" can be added to the list of things having to do with 1-18-08/Cloverfield that are in short supply.

Having sat on this post for a day, I'm going to tone it down a bit. This is first the post where I make a note of /film's leak buster report.

Last week DreadCentral reported a rumor from an e-mail spy that claimed to know the identity of the Cloverfield / 1-18-08 / Overnight monster(s).

According to “Mr. Slusho”, much of the movie will revolve around the characters fleeing for their lives, not from the big one stomping the city, but from the “raptor-like” smaller versions hunting them down.

We didn’t publish the report because our sources told us not to run with it. We have now verified with a second source that the report is completely untrue. We love DreadCentral. They have had some good scoops in the past, but this appears to not be one of them. Both of my trusted sources have assured me that raptor like creatures are meant to be in dinosaur movies, and not 1-18-08. So fear not, Cloverfield will not be a repeat of the often mocked American Godzilla film.

Second--and this is the part I've toned down--this post is where I document a notable increase in my own sense of futility. Both I, and some dozens like me, have devoted sites to 1-18-08. Uncounted others have participated exhaustively in uncounted forums and venues. These people, these little people (myself included), are not helped by /film's article above. Rather, we're left scratching our heads as to why a site with /film's connections would waste its time and favors dispelling "raptor like"? You see, the devil is in the details. /film's report does not specifically say the little monsters rumor is false. All it says is raptor like are for dinosaur movies and not 1-18-08. Great, but to be honest, the likeness of little suckers (read: my name for pintsize monsters) wasn't even a source of concern. It was confirmation of their very existence and how that confirmation lent its weight to other rumored "inside information" which also made reference to little suckers.

So /film, do you really think anyone was worried 1-18-08 was going to be a repeat of American Godzilla? Because to be honest, I wasn't worried about that particular brand of suck. Rather, my concern is little suckers portends a whole new kind of suck.

/film, AICN, other connected media types, do the little people (the ones paying attention but being ignored) a favor--do your homework so you can put your sources to good use. In the interum, here is a good question for you to ask:

Is there more than 1 monster?

While the answer to that question wouldn't give much away in terms of the plot, that same answer would lay to waste at least half of the fan fiction masquerading as leaked insider info.

Because Ugh! is what I said when I first caught wind of the utterly lame passive aggressive organism spiel, and I'm not alone in thinking this particular storyline is a real buzzkill. It was the very asinine nature of the concept that prevented me from posting about it earlier.

Anyway, if you read the comment in response to the first link, you'll understand why I've connected the two reports and given that connection reaches across desperate sites and mediums (read: hard to orchestrate), I'm inclined to give it more credence than I would like. The order:

Here is the first third of the film…About one billion (yes billion) years ago, life on Earth was still at the multi-cell level and they remained mostly in their habitat. One of the organisms was more passive and preferred a symbiotic relationship for their survival.

Another (and there were more) was more aggressive and preferred to control larger beings for their survival. Back then, the world had only one continent. The two organisms were separated, for the most part, by land.

But the aggressive organism had developed a taste for the passive one and tried to feed on it as often as possible by going around the land mass. Until a cataclysmic event changed things, burying most of the ancient organisms under the oceans. The surviving organisms either died off or evolved (later becoming humans and what not).

Fast forward to present day and we have Japan discovering the passive organisms buried off their coast and eventually came to the conclusion that the American continents (North and South) had drifted over the aggressive organisms (more on them later) during the past billion years.

Japanese scientists begin studying this passive organism and find that it is a perfect nourishment supplement to humans. Grown in an agricultural field on the island of Hokkaido, Japan, these organisms create the appearance of cloverfields. The scientists learn that these organisms are beneficial symbiotic parasites that give us additional nourishment and make us feel happy. Thus humans and the parasites become one.

They are kept cold to prevent them from dying from exposure until they are introduced into their host. Thus the development of the awesome and delicious drink – Slusho! (It makes me happy).

Rob is a college graduate who has been hired by Slusho and has just accepted an offer to work in their technologies division in Japan. Rob also knows the basics of the organism, the story that Slusho “invented” as a marketing campaign and has recently been informed that the scientists have found trace amounts of the aggressive organism.

This aggressive organism likes to pool up into a larger being, control it, own it, even change it. It also eats the smaller passive organism much the same way a whale will eat plankton. Slusho is now one of the most popular drinks. In it’s own right it is a tasty meal that does not add fat and is proven to be healthy with claims that it cures cancer and many other diseases.

Slusho and it’s by-products are now being flushed (literally) into the sewer systems and drained out to sea by way of urine, fecal matter and just straight unconsumed Slusho. This builds up on the ocean floor and eventually awakens a very hungry and aggressive organism.

This aggressive organism, hungry and well, aggressive, follows the sewer trail back to New York and emerges through the sewers breaking and igniting a natural gas pipeline in it’s effort to feed on the passive organism, which is now us.

Anonymous said...As a former employee of Paramount-Dreamworks (great time to leave, right? haha) I've met tons of great, powerful people.Some of these people even greenlighted Cloverfield.I think I've met "John Murphy" if he's the person I'm thinking of.There was a guy on one of the various cloverfield forums that leaked this info (he read the outline, I believe). I think "John" summed it up nicely.The monster is a parasite. It loses it's skin which creates these insane little creatures that scurry around New York killing people and such.It's an incredible monster movie that won't dissappoint.See you on 1-18-08.

You see that giant monster that emerges from the ocean to begin laying waste to New York City ... it didn't come alone.

According to "Mr. Slusho", much of the movie will revolve around the characters fleeing for their lives, not from the big one stomping the city, but from the "raptor-like" smaller versions hunting them down.

Figuring this would be fun but expect the worst come the release date. But I have to say, between the bs speculation that's filling the void of no news and no progress on the game front, and now the buzz from a site that I assume values its reputation (unlike some). Well, here's the quote, you be the judge:

Someone I know to be "in the know" was willing to throw me a bone with some small but interesting tidbits about the mysterious monster movie under the condition of absolute anonymity. With that in mind, let's just call this particular person "Mr. Slusho". Let me preface this by saying I have no way of confirming any of this info, though I've no reason to believe "Mr. Slusho" would feed me false information on purpose.

Anyway, here's what I've been told.

It's not Godzilla or Voltron (duh) or even Cthulu; anyone expecting there to be some sort of elaborately detailed backstory may be in for a disappointment. Expect an old-fashioned monster movie retold in a very modern Blair Witch sort of way - but with a twist. You see that giant monster that emerges from the ocean to begin laying waste to New York City ... it didn't come alone.

According to "Mr. Slusho", much of the movie will revolve around the characters fleeing for their lives, not from the big one stomping the city, but from the "raptor-like" smaller versions hunting them down.

If so, that would make sense. Word from the start has been that this would not be a mega-budget movie and the digital effects work needed for a giant monster trashing New York City would no doubt cost a heck of a lot more than street level action of people being chased by smaller monsters. This would also seem to jive with some of the set footage that's shown up online ... it's just too bad it sounds so much like the Emmerich Godzilla, however.

So there you go, folks. We'll find out how accurate this insider info is soon enough. In the meantime I now return to your regularly scheduled Cloverfield/1-18-08 speculation. -- The Foywonder, Dead Central

In response to that, all I can say is "Ugh!" Thankfully, mini-raptor-like-versions doesn't seem to mesh with what is known. Or does it?

If you're around my age (and JJ Abrams is) you may have a memory or two of "Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot." I mention it because if you check my last post, you'll see that the Emperor Guillotine tagged the Statue of Liberty with his glyph.

1-18-08 Blogspot managed to salvage an MP3 audio file that someone jacked from a set computer and posted in Unfiction (Edit: which has now been removed by order of Paramount, which is why you should "hurry" on over to 1-18-08 Blogspot to have a listen).

Cloverfield Clues received an email from Paramount demanding he remove the "Cheese" call sheet from his blog. Problem is he never posted it. Nevertheless, skeptics take note. That "Call Sheet" was apparently the genuine article.

The Trailer: I seem to be stuck on the idea of Product Placement: Case in point, Slusho. Unfortunately, the technology available to *me* has proven inadequate to the task of making out the names of other products in the trailer. In particular, the following scene(1) strikes me as, umm, off-center/on-subject.

1-18-08.com: No new pictures means: 1. everything we need to connect the dots is already contained in the images already posted; 2. the idea that the images contain clues is way better than the original idea behind the site, so this is the downtime while Abrams and Co. scramble to start putting clues in future images; 3. random is as random does; or 4. nothing.

Speaking of 1-18-08.com, here's a timewaster for those of you still looking for clues. Save the .swf files(2) to your computer, open them using a word processing program and plug the gibberish you get into a translator. Tell me that wouldn't be a great place to hide clues. Unfortunately, in this regard, my Kung-Fu is not strong (and the activity tends to crash my programs).

Character MySpace Pages: Maybe it's because I loath the idea of getting into MySpace, but I don't see much promise in these sites. I suppose if you want to learn to relate to the characters, they're good for that, but as far as clues to the nature of the beast are concerned, how are these people supposed to know anything? Recall, on January 1, 2008, they are as surprised/mystified/clueless as the rest of us. I don't buy into the incredible coincidence if true theories that the beast has something to do with Slusho AND going to work for Slusho just happens to be why Rob going to Japan and it all goes down on the night of the going away to Japan to work for Slusho (source of the monster) party...

Besides, is it too much to ask that at least one friend be a nerd and have a blog? How about Mr. Anti-Social there(1), standing behind the foosball table. Why doesn't he have a blog?

Added two WordPress blogs to the Blogroll: semidi and nonsense. Tried plugging their category feeds into the combined 1-18-08 Blogs feed, but both feeds showed old posts. Fortunately, both sites still show up on the Technorati and Blogsearch "search" feeds, and I also added a WordPress.com category feed for "1-18-08" (which does captures semidi's posts as well as those of the WordPress community) near the end of the right column.

Dropped from the Blogroll:

-Stopped posting: http://exittomysteryst.blogspot.com/(3)-Stopped posting: http://wellmissyourob.wordpress.com/(3)-Only made 4 posts and appears to be done: http://cloverfieldrc.blogspot.com/(3)-Succumbed to sensationalism for traffic's sake: http://1-18-08news.com/(4)

Finally, An Open Note to JJ Abrams and Co.

Dear JJ:

Just thought you might like to know that your viral marketing campaign is taking a turn for the worse. The internet is stumped. In the vacuum, the more thoughtful marketers are losing ground to the less disciplined and ethically challenged. Not the end of the world of course. It is just the internets (sic). Nevertheless, a science as young as viral marketing could probably use an axiom or two. May I suggest: Feeding the beasts keeps them hungry for more. Starving the beasts culls the herd but for those that prefer the taste of their own shit.

(3)Still plugged into the combined 1-18-08 Blogs feed, so if they pick up again their posts will pop up and I'll put them back on the roll.

(4)Removed from the 1-18-08 Blogs feed as well. I won't go into the details other than to say I gave the guy more chances than he deserved before axing him. There's certainly a substantial audience for his style, and they'll find him I don't doubt, but I feel a certain (even if misplaced) responsibility to maintain some standards for the sake of the occasional reader, and I don't want to be in the business of promoting bullshit artists.

Wondering aloud if the explosion illuminated something during the trailer. Here are 6 screenshots. What has my attention is the nonsymmetrical downward curve that reflects the light from the flaming bit of debris that passes behind the buildings on the right and reemerges just within the shot. That's far right quadrant for those of you who found that tortured sentence impossible to follow.

But, if this movie has taught me anything, it's that if I look hard enough for something in these images, I'll find it, even if it's not really there :-).

An aside: Project Cloverfield has a real nice operation and is a leading authority as far as 1-18-08 blogs go, so if you've thought about contributing or feel your observations deserve a wider audience, you could do worse than to give Jordan an assist.

On the heals of a suspenseful and fruitful week that culminated in the above, Mike is probably not alone in his critique of the state of the viral marketplace at the end of this week that just doesn't compare. He hypothesizes that there are no clues or leads hidden in either the Slusho or 1-18-08 websites because no one has found any, and he laments the rising tide of uninformed comment as the cloverfield virus inspires the lackluster musings of the passive hordes. Or something to that effect.

Contrary to Mike's perspective is that of the people running this campaign, who are faced with keeping it going for at least another 5 months, and ideally all the way to and through January 18, 2007. In that light, the idea that the clues should be easy to find and/or decipher or that we should expect hand-fed progress on a weekly basis seems somewhat unreasonable. More likely is that the people in charge of doling out puzzle pieces are going to err on the side of making the clues all but impossible to find, because making it too easy isn't a blunder you can undo, but making it too hard is easily remedied at the time and place of your choosing.

If there's criticism to be handed out (and lightly at that), it should be directed instead toward the informed sites whose attention this week has been almost entirely focused on unearthing and publicizing the flood of "spy" reports and footage that have dominated the week's coverage. Not that there's anything wrong with spies or reporting their findings. All's fair in viral marketing. But when you're focused on the spies, you're not focused on the game, but rather on outflanking the game, and likely because the game is getting the better of you.

Don’t give up on Slusho or 1-18-08 just yet, and don't be too quick to discount the fresh eyes and unprejudiced speculation of the inexpert mob either. And lastly, if you find yourself wondering why you care, go back and watch the trailer again.

Cloverfield - the Hindu theory offers a note of caution to Cloverfield fans, pointing to the Haas obsessed's letdown (and bad behavior) now that there's no doubt ethanhaaswasright.com relates to a role-playing game and not a modern day messiah(?) Big difference being Cloverfield fans know it's about a movie going in, whereas the Haas stuff appears to have appealed, not to gamers, but to people in search of a modern-day apocalyptic sci-fi religion. So, different crowd.

Nevertheless, JJ Abrams history being the best predictor of the future at this point, you can expect to be delighted in the short run and somewhat disappointed or mildly frustrated in the long run. That translates to the here now being the good part (re: see first seasons of Alias, Lost), while the actual movie will probably be more like life (read: imperfect). Still, something "original" (in so far as a giant monster can be).

Lastly, it should be said (while it shouldn't need to be) that the trick of viral marketing is the elusiveness of the spoiler. For cloverfield sites* the 1-18-08 spoiler is the brass ring. So while none carry the spoiler alert, it's a safe bet that once the spoiler is found, they'll all rush to publish it.

A new cloverfield blogger is reporting to be malemunyon of Unfiction/Overnight fame. The blog (complete with adsense*) is at CloverfieldRC. Too little too late to get the credit, but maybe that slight (and the many like it) will inspire malemunyon to even greater sleuthing.

Addendum: Also note the blog doesn't incorporate "overnight" into its url or title. Perhaps not a conscious decision, but considering the source, the omission is a conspicuous one.

We're always evolving and looking to improve our methods and design, so if you find a deficiency or know of a way in which we can do things better, please email us or leave a comment.

Right Column

Results Feeds for the Boolean searches Cloverfield or 1-18-08 or Slusho from: Technorati, Blogsearch, Bloglines, Google News, Yahoo News, ... Of course, if any of the key words change or the list grows, we'll update these results. If we're missing a search that you've found fruitful or unique, lets us know.

Center Column

1-18-08 BlogRoll - The list of all 1-18-08 movie blogs we've found. A few are excluded, but only because they appear abandoned. If you know of or own a 1-18-08 movie blog not on the list, send us an email.

1-18-08 Blogs - This is the combined feed of all the blogs in the 1-18-08 BlogRoll.

1-18-08 Blog Comments - This is the combined feed of all the comments begin made on all the blogs in the 1-18-08 BlogRoll.

Bookmarks - This is a combined feed of various searches of Cloverfield or 1-18-08 or Slusho various bookmaking sites (Digg, del.icio.us, reddit, etc).